She Who Died Smiling
by Madeener
Summary: And so she died, smiling, as if fulfilled, as if, by chance, happy. This gift of truth, I wish to share with them, for only when the haze of slander is cleared from their eyes will my spirit find respite. [DOTA Fanfic]
1. I

**Disclaimer:** I'm not very sure who the DOTA heroes belong to, but they sure as hell don't belong to me. The story and everyone else does, though.

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**I**

And so she died, smiling, as if fulfilled, as if, by chance, happy.

"Eh?" the man said, fiddling with his guitar. "Sounds odd for the beginning of a story." I smiled weakly at the dark-skinned man, forgiving his rude manners, for they were outlandish, as was he. He ate our food without reserve, drank our wine as if granted, but both Arthuria and I knew we had too much, and we shared it in return for the thin man's company, a trade of food for life.

I found him along our street shouldering a ragged sack and with his black hair in a mess. He was knocking on doors, from neighbour to neighbour, offering 'services' in return for the night's lodging. But even in his faded shirtsleeves and tunic typical of wanderers, almost everyone felt an air of ambiguity around him, as if he wasn't only the simple peddler he appeared to be, but a runaway of sorts, from law or vengeance, or even something greater. Why else would a rat come to this hole of unfamiliar rats, if not to hide among them?

"I come to tell and make stories, to show and weave, to sing," he said. I pretended to believe him, and took him in even against Arthuria's protests. September he named himself, and he was a wandering poet, having an old guitar as proof. His accent and soft, flowing speech was alien to city people like us, whom all speak roughly like grumbling lions. When asked where he came from, he said, "I don't know, really. Somewhere from the southlands, I think. I can't remember." He wasn't uneducated, knowing how to write a number of runes of Common, and he also had an uncanny ability to point out directions without guide nor compass. 'Street-smart' Arthuria called it; I called it 'wanderer's sense'; we were both not wrong, yet not completely right either, no doubt. He was content with simply staying in our house at first, trying to read the few books and rolls of parchment I had, relics from my time as a boy. But soon, even he got bored with that, and he roamed the dusty market streets of Gregminster penniless, chatting with whoever would spare him a few words or a song to sing.

It had been a lot of trouble for Arthuria and I to keep him out of the local police's way when he was in the mood for making conversation—loud conversation—with strangers. Not because I was afraid that they'd do him injustice, but because the mood of the city was grim, and the law-keepers might be less tolerant then they used to. Thankfully, he soon understood after witnessing the ruin atop the Centrehill, and kept his questions for the two of us to answer.

"I heard that you pale elves can do, you know, sorcery with the flick of a hand and a thought for company," he said, manning the fireplace while Arthuria cleared the table and washed the china. I hesitated, not knowing whether he had meant to mock me, although his tone sounded merely curious.

Arthuria decided to answer him. "Yes," she answered amid trashing of water in her washing basin, "you need only think of your objective, or close your eyes, and with a gesture of the hand, your thought rings true if your gift acknowledges it."

"Gift?"

"The gift of color. White, black, blue and red," she shrugged.

"What's the difference between each color?"

She stayed silent for a while, searching for me through the side of her eye, as if asking for help. "The gifts have a kind of caste system. White is the power to mend, to heal. To bring together what is broken, to sew back what is torn, and is the highest of the caste. Blue is the anti-magic, to stop, to silence. It is the magic which ends all others, the finger over the lips. Red is blood, to flow, to balance. It has no spells to its name, and most half-elves fall into this caste. Black is the power to break, to sheer, to destroy, and is the lowest of the caste."

He was quiet awhile, musing, watching the fireplace flame crackle meekly. "And Arthuria, your color is –?"

"I have no gift. I am human," she said.

"And Meister, you are –?"

"Black," I said. "I can turn a chair into dust, a spider into a pool of blood and wrench the living soul out of anyone I please."

There was an uncomfortable chill of silence, my companions being reminded forcefully of just what manner of person they lodged with. September thought it best to leave me alone, and continued with Arthuria instead. "Seems like pale elves are pretty common in Gregminster, huh?" he asked, to which Arthuria nodded as she emerged from the kitchen to join us at the hearth.

She took a seat next to our winter table and distributed the cups. A sweet, warm sensation caressed my face and entered my nose. Carefully, we sipped the beverage and felt its hands of watery warmth comfort us inside, and then we went on talking.

"Do you happen to know any others?" September asked, insatiable. "How do they live? What do they do? I'd love to have a talk with one of them."

"I used to serve two of them, a prince and the princess in the mansion north of the city. The Meister was the princess's teacher," Arthuria said, making a face as she mentioned them.

"Really? Tell them about them, please. I'd like to hear. Are they married?"

"No, they were father and daughter, and two of the kindest masters one could have," she gulped as she was reminded of them. "The lord was a great man who took my mother in when she came banging upon his door, her will shattered and with me. Even after her death upon my birth, he kept me and had me tutored in his own house. The princess was—"

"A black witch," I cut her short.

"I see, I see," he said. "The two of you keep using 'was' and 'were'. Where are they now? What happened to them?"

"They're dead, September," I said indifferently. "Gone."

Arthuria looked down, silent, trying her best to hide her eyes from us. September gave me a blank stare for a moment, and with a grave tone, asked, "What happened?"

"They were played with, the both of them." I was feeling a bit drunk, whether from the tea or frustration, I didn't know. "Played with in the hands of those old men, like a deck of cards. I did what I could to save the girl, but… _araku_!" I yelled, causing September to be taken aback. "Sorry. Looks like the city's moodiness didn't spare this house." I gave a small, pathetic laugh.

September stared at the two of us for awhile before getting up and returning to us with his guitar in hand, and began to play. Arthuria and I looked up at him. It sounded chaotic, and tragic, yet, it could draw no tears. It was just mournful, mournful and heavy upon my heart. "Does her song sound like this?"

I was lost for words, yet something tugged me. I replied with a yes. He nodded and continued playing, and in silence Arthuria and I listened, unflinchingly, broodingly. When he finished, we felt no resolve to clap. He did not care, only saying, "Please tell me more about her. I fear she her life might be a story my heart will regret should I fail to write."

We did not move. He repeated his request. "Please."

"Okay," I said. "Okay."


	2. II

**Disclaimer:** I'm not very sure who the DOTA heroes belong to, but they sure as hell don't belong to me. The story and everyone else does, though.

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**II**

Story, deed and death rotate eternally in a waltz, September told me. In the cycle, deed always takes the first step, and then death the second, followed closely with story behind. Then it begins again, and again, timeless, forever. Tap, tap, tap. Tap, tap, tap. A story may end in death, but never has it ended with death, for words and song linger on, sung and spoken till the time when winds speak no more.

That was what he told me to convince me that the beginnings of her story should begin with the end of mine (without having to die, of course). He asked me about me, and how I got here, what I did before I met her. It wasn't too difficult considering I had only lived to the early half of my Calling when I met her. In a measure of age, that would be around the age of twenty.

At my elven feast of Breaking, when all high elves are given their tongue names at the age of ten, I accidentally injured a pair of naughty neighbours in a fit of anger. What struck my father was not why I did it, but how. A scream, and a great thought of malice was what caused the lanterns to burst in flames, burning the mischievous twins below the rope wire where they sat. Immediately he called for my grandaunt, the village witch, and I was confined in my room for several days, as if under 'house arrest' as they call it here.

At the end of my confinement, she brought me to her house: that stinking old nest with every alternate surface kick in dust, and with dried hen dung scattered around in generous portions. She told me I had a strong gift, one which I had to learn to control to not endanger myself and those around me, and for months she took me as prentice, trying her best to impart all her lore and witch morals into me, which I took great pleasure in learning. But after a short period, she conceded that she could not keep me as prentice, not because I would or could not be taught, but because my gift far exceeded her's, and she could teach me no more.

"Send the child to Pender," she told my father. "The winds are strong within his valleys, and an old gull like me can ride them no further." My father was proud that his son had potential for greatness, yet worried that he would have no means to allow him to realise it.

So for the next three years, he and my mother toiled the fields and pastures, slowly saving for my fees in Pender while I stayed in the witch's old nest, feeding the hens and managing the garden when my grandaunt had not done or had forgotten to. I told them I didn't need nor want to go, but they did not listen. "A gift is like a flame, my son," mother often reminded me. "Handled right, it is a great servant, warming hearts, scaring away the chill, but ignored, it burns like a spite-hungered demon, laying heaths and trees to waste."

The efforts of their tireless labour: two young heifers, our best bull, the entire family fortune and half our family estate was enough to grant me passage and entry to the great school of Pender. Tearful with hope and full of pride, they sent their sole family heir southward to the world of men in a new woolen felt shirt and my grey jacket of Calling, which I was to wear with my coming of age. I cried myself to sleep in my bunk that night, much to the irritation of those who shared my cabin.

I still think of them sometimes. I want to go back to that barren place we so grandly call our 'estates' and tell them, "Mummy, daddy, you don't have to work anymore! I've got all we never had before! We can get out of here! Go anywhere we like! Buy green land!" but I know I can't. The greatest shame of the high elves is to see the face of the child they sent away, and that shame I won't let them shoulder.

I came to Pender alone as a boy dressed dully among the dazzle of colours—the colours of the rich. Upon the door I knocked, and the keeper let me in, and to them all I simply said was, "I come to learn," and that was it. In my time there I earned a friend named Nortrom of Ghy. He was a hearty fellow, always quick to joke and slow to anger, and being a high elf as well he kept me out of trouble, or more precisely, safe, for the rich do not tolerate stains on their fabrics, nor do they welcome a poor farm boy among their ranks. Time without Nortrom, who kept a different schedule being five years my senior, was close to a nightmare. There were sneers and threats along every corridor, stares and hisses in every room. Had the masters not threatened the snakes with purgatory for my sake, I wouldn't have left scarless as I am now. It was the pressure from these threats, coupled with a mind full of anxiety and yearning to leave, that I graduated even before my Calling, way ahead of my peers.

"Knew you'd call it done early," Nortrom had said, on the eve of our parting. "The time you spent at the table was enough to make some think you were possessed! Now I wonder who'd take this little demon in." He laughed, and I laughed too. In my hurry to leave, I'd forgotten to make arrangements for where I'd stay and work. It was okay, I thought, for it was common for sorcerers to beg as they wandered from place to place, in search of deeds they could do and scales they could mend. And so with a hug and a promise to meet again, we parted ways: he going west to the city-state of Asper, and me, with nothing but the clothes over my shoulders, northward toward nowhere in particular.

Unfortunately, what I had failed to be informed of was what _type_ of sorcerer people were willing to accommodate. Upon the news that I was a black mage, they backed away, and close their windows, and lock their doors, leaving the once lively street with the charm of a dreary graveyard. I was amazed by how willing they gave into superstition. There was no whisper when I walked through the street, no sound save for my pleads to them to not fear me. Occasionally, a brave soul or child would gap through a broken window sill, and they would always scream the same thing: "_Farfir, aranuk!_" – Leave, demon-spawn! in the elven tongue, in which many phrases and songs are recited widely in these parts, though most whom speak are human. Their iron refusal to accommodate, let alone listen to me, forced me to forage for wild edibles along the road of what seemed to be a long journey with no end. I even used my gift to cripple small boars or rabbits sometimes, and as their dead bodies smoldered at the stake, I would sit quietly in apology to my masters in Pender, who taught me that all animals deserved a chance to live, and that using the gift to kill them was to cheat, to tip the scales unfairly in our favour, to create imbalance. Though I agreed with them, my hunger did not.

Half a thousand miles and six zombie towns later, I came here: the rich city-state of Gregminster. I had thought that the people here, surrounded by tools and chariots and not wheat and plows, would be more welcoming to me, but it was a foolish thought as I realised that news of my coming had travelled far before me, and as I walked the stone paved streets they shied away or hid, shielding their children, stowing away their goods, much like the village folk did. I knocked on the door's of several schools, asking for work, but the schoolmasters preferred sorcerers of local birth, and had no place for me among them. And so I did what I had done many times before, begging for shelter, much like September did, and much like him, I was rejected, over and over again.

It had rained that night, and I was desperate, dragging my rain-drenched clothes and possessions along with slow, unsure steps. I was willing to do whatever anyone wanted for a night's roof at that point, and thought I'd been lucky when I found a man walking stoically down a stairway, a large paper umbrella in hand. Little did I know my meeting with him would have been more fate than luck.

"Please, meister elf, lend this poor fool a wing under your care, and he shall toil for you a week for nothing in return," I said, giving little thought to who or what I committed myself to. He was not unkempt, and had a pair of shining blue eyes under a handsomely combed head of straight black hair, and as he looked at me, his pointed ears twitched as he saw mine.

"Are you not _aranuk?_" he said, which was more statement than question. Great, was he a bloody sooth-sayer as well? I thought. I took great offence, but before I could say a word, I felt the shield of his umbrella hove over my head.

"Come, you need shelter. And food," he said as he studied me. He must have seen a stick.

"Thank you, meister elf."

Under the veil of his small umbrella, we walked through small, gapping corridors and along the pavement of dark streets. "We're approaching," he said as we passed the terraces, and a dark garden, and the sad yelping of gloomy dogs charged with the protection of their master's house. Soon, we came upon a large brick house, of which colour I could not yet discern, and he opened the gate to enter. I gasped, thinking: By Aith, he's rich! As soon as we entered an old woman clad in a grey dress and apron handed the man a towel, saying, "Welcome back, my lord." She turned to me, and eyed me suspiciously with a toxic gaze, until the man said, "He's to be our guest for tonight. Ready baths for us, and after that, serve some bread and cheese, and maybe pumpkin soup if it isn't too much trouble." The maid nodded obediently, though as she turned, she refused to give up her stare.

And so I felt no reason to reject his hospitality and enjoyed the first warm bath I had had in months. I couldn't help but grope at and inhale the fresh smell of citrus from the white robe she had prepared for me, and bounce on my tummy on the feather mattress and linen blanket like a child. At the dining table, a pair of warm candles stood lit, and at the hearth a great fire burned, banishing the cold of rain. There I thanked the master of the house. He acknowledged me with a curt nod, and beckoned me to eat. I did as he had welcomed, and ate one of the small loaves served in the wicker basket, and another, and then a third. He questioned me, and I admitted I had had nothing to eat since I slept the night before. He watched me for a while, and then kept me company by drinking his soup as I wolfed down more bread and cheese and soup. At the end of my meal my mouth betrayed a belch, and I quickly apologized. He looked at me with a disappointed gaze until he too belched by accident, and to this irony we both laughed.

"Thank you for your hospitality, meister elf," I thanked him again. He waved his hand in acknowledgement while his servant served cups of wine, and once again he beckoned me to drink. It was fiery, volcanic and strong; it warmed the inside of me, and for awhile we discussed the wines of the city-states, before the subject returned to me.

"I'm sorry, meister elf. I regret that I have not yet asked your name."

"Sonra-Yie is what people call me," he said, and I told him mine.

"You are _aranuk_, are you not?" he asked. It was that same bloody question again, but in his hospitality, I thought better of him. I nodded.

"From where do you hail?"

"From further north than north, over the plains of the night-elven domains is the land of my birth, to which I fear I will never return. I schooled in Pender," I said proudly.

"Ah, a drake of Pender! You rarely see one these days. Where do you journey?"

I hesitated at the question, wondering what my answer would make him think of him. "Nowhere. Even now I search for settlement and purpose."

My host looked puzzled. "A sorcerer in need of work?" he exclaimed, "By Aith! Another thing you don't hear of everyday." He laughed. I did not laugh with him.

"Aye, it is with misfortune that my gift plagues me with my title. Many shun me for no reason; even more fear me for nothing. I walk like a headless gebbeth from place to place: a vile creature with no eyes to see its prey, yet still feared because of what it is." I thought he had caught a glimpse trouble in my face just then, for he stared with a concerned gaze. Or it was probably just the exhaustion I felt inside.

"Join the military?"

"Most do; but I choose the hard, rocky road of longevity over the easy, downhill one toward death," I murmured.

Again, he stared, and I looked downward to avoid his piercing gaze. His eyes were frightful, a pair of emerald lances which studied you as if stabbing, digging and tearing into your depths, trying to read what you did not want anyone to know. I knew he saw my mother, her tearful face as she forced that promise upon me. "Never be one of war!" she had made me swear, and that oath I took, though I was hesitant, if not confused by her insistence. The lord Sonra-Yie was a man who took interest in people, and wasn't shy to hide it. A man who could reflect one's inner face if he studied it long enough.

"Why not work for me, then?" he asked, suddenly. I was surprised, and he repeated himself, as if I hadn't understood.

"You would take one of my kind under your wing? What of your name, meister? What of your family?" The list of questions and worries grew.

He laughed. "Having another _aranuk_ in the house couldn't do much harm," he said. "You see, my daughter is one, and I need a teacher for her. What better person can a man hope for than a drake from the school of Pender itself?"

So he had a daughter, I thought. "Even if I can guide, I may not guide well, or in the best direction. How do you know if I'm the right guide?"

He looked at me, and our eyes locked. "Because the rains forced me upon a detour; because the winds pushed a stray sorcerer at me. Because I believe our meeting was coincidence, yet not by chance. Because I don't know, yet I do."

I did not understand him, but he hurried me. "Your answer?"

It was an opportunity I knew I'd regret if I missed, so I jumped at it. "My word is yours, lord." There was no hesitation in my tone, and I was too tired to think.

"Good, good," he said heaving a sigh as he rouse from his seat. I did too, as was respectful in elven custom. "Have a pleasant night, Meister," he said, and he walked up the stairway into shadow, his servant following close behind.


End file.
